Xilinx ships the first parts in its Zynq-7000 extensible processing platform

December 08, 2011 // Nick Flaherty

Xilinx has demonstrated its Zynq-7000 Extensible Processing Platform (EPP) for the first time as it starts shipping devices to customers. The platform combines 28nm FPGA fabric with a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processing system, with the 30K logic cell Zynq-7000 EPP shown running a Linux-based application.

Customers who have developed systems using the Zynq-7000 EPP emulation platform, early access Xilinx hardware tools and standard software tools from the ARM ecosystem are now migrating their applications to these first devices, including an embedded computer-on-module (COM) product.
“We’ve been heavily focused on the development of our Zynq-7000 EPP products and IP over the past several months,” says Michael Fawcett, CTO of iVeia, “So, naturally, we were very excited to receive our first Zynq-7020 devices. Our Atlas-I-Z7e will be the first computer-on-module to host a Zynq device and will drop into existing sockets for Android handheld, digital radio, and video processing applications. We fully expect to be able to demonstrate such applications within a few months, a credit to Xilinx’s early access support, tools, and emulation platform.”
Production qualified parts of the Zynq-7020 are on track to begin shipping in the second half of 2012, says Xilinx.
“It’s exciting to see early access customers take what they’ve accomplished since we first launched the Extensible Processing Platform program in April 2010 and apply their systems to these first devices,” said Lawrence Getman, Vice President of Processing at Xilinx. “We are able to give them a significant time to market advantage in their development and introduction of new products that require the unrivalled levels of system performance, flexibility and integration offered by this new class of system-on-chip.”
Emulation platforms, hardware development tools, Open Source Linux support and the recently announced Extensible Virtual Platform developed jointly with Cadence Design Systems all help to make developing and implementing Zynq-7000 EPP systems possible. A growing list of OS support is adding to an expanding ecosystem offering embedded tool and software development solutions.
Test system vendors National Instruments and Rohde & Schwarz are also using the technology.
“Participating in the Early Access Program gave National Instruments the opportunity to jump start development to make it possible for NI LabVIEW system design software to program both the high performance processor and programmable fabric present in the Zynq-7000 EPP with a single development environment,” said Jamie Smith, Director of Embedded Systems Product Marketing at National Instruments. “Now that we've received the silicon, we'll continue our development toward providing control and monitoring systems to our customers leveraging the increased capabilities of the Zynq-7000 devices.”
“When we looked at the possibility of leveraging our processor based development investments across different product lines, the Zynq-7000 Extensible Processing Platform’s combination of processor and programmable logic became a clear choice for several of our applications,” said Bernd Liebetrau, Head of CoC Digital Integration at Rohde & Schwarz. “The platform approach allows us to customize each device to meet our various application needs while at the same time enabling us to leverage the software developments over multiple products. Rohde & Schwarz has always been at the forefront of technology and being an early adopter and receiving early samples of the Zynq-7000 EPP is a significant milestone for us.”
To meet new customer requirements in high-end applications targeting Wired, Wireless and Video Broadcast markets, Xilinx is also replacing its high end Zynq-7040 device with a new Zynq-7045 device to extend the family’s range of 12.5Gbps transceiver technology to 16. This will enable further bridging applications and wider connections to high speed DAC/ADCs. The increased programmable logic capacity (DSP, BRAM and Logic) will offer designers greater signal processing capability for functions such as filtering, digital conversions, and more, as well as greater opportunities for customizing specific functions. The Zynq-7045 device becomes the new high end of the Zynq-7000 family that spans from 30k logic cells to target the most cost sensitive industrial, automotive and consumer applications, all the way up to 350k logic cells for the applications requiring the highest capacity and performance in a single scalable platform.

Technical papers     

• AR RF/Microwave Instrumentation Field Analyzers
• 16-Bit, 100 kSPS Low Power Successive Approximation ADC System
• Replacing the Candle in the Candelabra
• Adaptive Cell Converter Topology Enables Constant Efficiency in PFC Applications

December 15, 2011 | Texas instruments | 222901974

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